Old Medium That Is Still Young
The mass media is still not only relevant but also most important for any brand in India at the current Indian Socio-Economic situation. (Even in a developed market like US, the super bowl still remains the King of all Media) To put this briefly, we can summarise this in three broader facts.
Credibility: The credibility of a brand is built over a longer period over multiple factors like brand safety, avoiding ad frauds & bots, hacking, misleading ads etc., Only the mass media has Industry governing bodies (like INS, IBF) that not only makes sure the advertiser are responsible for the communication they make but also make sure they get penalised if they cheat. There are rules & regulations to filter most of the non-credible ads. Mass media is in existence for decades, print media comes first scoring 62% on the news credibility index, followed by radio with 57% and TV news with 56% & hence customers subconsciously believe in them.
Reach & Penetration: India is a 1.3 bn population with 31% of Urban & 69% of rural population. Literacy is still growing in India. We have around 31 cr. The household of which TV penetrated household is only 62%, while TV penetration of the southern states is more than 95%, the northern states have still larger population who are adapting to TV even today. There is still enough headroom for TV to grow in those media dark regions like UP-Uttarakhand, Bihar-Jharkhand, MP-Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan. India is the only major country in the world where mass media is still growing.
The reason why all the tech giants, Dotcoms, Ecommerce are dominant in the Mass Media is exactly for the same reason. To grow the business, the business needs to reach more people & penetrate more markets (Tier 2, 3) Mass Media is the only rational option to the Business for continuous growth.
Continuously Evolving: If you think the mass media is going to die or stop growing, think twice. TV has evolved from a single channel to more than 1000 channels now over three / four decades. From a standard definition to high definition, from single national sports channels to regional sports channels to connected TVs now. Within each state there is significant growth on the regional channels, for example, dependency on HSM inputs in markets like Bihar-Jharkhand, UP-Uttarakhand, Punjab, Orissa, Assam has reduced with the increase in the region-specific channels. Television has grown and has higher eyeballs and with all the changes in the current scenario, still, TV is the cost-effective medium to reach a larger audience. Print is getting back to their circulation no’s and growing in India with multiple options like E-paper, News Apps and still the preferred medium to build trust, detailing, credibility, trade push. Radio, from Aakashvani to FMs, is now online covering 39% of the area and 52% of the population of India.
Yes, mobile penetration has significantly grown across markets in India, which is also leading to a significant jump in the growth of the digital medium. Videos are more on-demand, increase in the viewership of OTT, but we should also keep in mind that India has 69% of the rural population who has a smartphone but is still on pre-paid and has bandwidth issues. That is also the reason why the movies which got released on OTT when aired on Television still has higher viewership and we all know that the attention span on the digital medium is hardly 3-5 secs for the brand and most of us keep waiting for the Skip Button to watch the content on digital.
Mass media was, is & will always be relevant & Important for the people & thereby for Indian business. With the current change in the entire consumer journey, the brand has much more support mediums to reach out to the end consumer.
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